Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Chronological Culture Change And Organization In The Middle Ohio Valley

爱德华·亨利，圣路易斯华盛顿大学的博士候选人，将调查北美东部的古代几何土纪念碑。本研究将探讨仪式行为背景下的集体劳动努力，它们在社会整合中的作用，以及它们对意识形态参与的反映。虽然这项研究关注的是过去，但它也有可能为现在提供信息。仪式和以社区为中心的劳动在今天仍然是建立和维持社会秩序的因素。学者们指出，参与仪式劳动活动有助于建立和巩固社会纽带，再现意识形态，加强社会政治和经济议程。利用考古学来评估古代小规模社会的礼仪性土质纪念碑的建造，为探索社会复杂性的物质指标、它是如何出现和组织的提供了一个背景。更好地了解北美东部的阿德纳和霍普韦尔（公元前500年-公元600年）社会建造土制纪念碑的方式和速度。这些组织似乎是流动的，没有类似国家的领导等级制度。尽管如此，这些人还是组织起来建造了几何形状复杂的围场、大型墓地，并维持了一个大陆交换异国货物的网络。考察这些仪式化的景观改造实践是如何、以多快的速度在俄亥俄河谷传播开来的，可以让我们理解新兴的社会复杂性，在那里，大规模的劳动活动是在基于严格等级制度的社会政治结构之外进行的。亨利将研究沟渠和堤岸的几何围墙是如何在俄亥俄州中部山谷的肯塔基州中部的蓝草地区建造的。这个地区被认为是古代北美东部阿德纳和霍普韦尔社会的中心地带。考察肯塔基州的这些仪式场所，可以看到俄亥俄河以南的景象，在那里，按照时间顺序对围场建设的理解需要改进。更好地了解圈地的建造、使用和废弃的历史，将有助于表明与阿德纳和霍普韦尔的出现相关的社会变化（例如，狩猎和园艺经济、陶瓷技术、新的动物形象学）传播得有多快。此外，这项工作将展示该地区如何采用特定的仪式实践。通过挖掘横跨肯塔基州中部的八个土围场的多个区域，亨利将看到在每个遗址的建设过程中景观是如何被修改的，并确定仪式劳动的传统是否存在差异。他将检查路堤和沟渠的施工概况，并在围栏内开放大型（约4 x 4米）挖掘块，以探索在其边界内进行的活动。这个强大的数据集将用于研究古代北美东部社会复杂性的组织和传播。这项研究的历史部分将与现代美国印第安人的背景有关。这项研究将为攻读人类学和考古学学位的学生提供专门的考古训练。

Edward Henry, PhD Candidate at Washington University in St. Louis, will investigate ancient geometric earthen monuments in Eastern North America. This research will explore collective labor efforts within contexts of ritual action, their role in social integration, and their reflection of ideological participation. While the research focuses on the past it also has the potential to inform on the present. Ritual and community focused labor are factors which today still serve to establish and maintain social order. Scholars have noted that participatory engagement in ritualistic labor events can help create and solidify social bonds, reproduce ideologies, and reinforce sociopolitical and economic agendas. Using archaeology to assess the construction of ceremonial earthen monuments by ancient small-scale societies provides a context to explore the material indicators for social complexity, how it emerges, and is organized. A better technological and chronological understanding of how, and how quickly, earthen monuments are built by Adena and Hopewell (500 BCE-600 CE) societies of Eastern North America. These groups are seemingly mobile and do not have a state-like leadership hierarchy. Nevertheless, these people organized to build geometrically complex enclosure sites, large burial mounds, and maintain a continental exchange network in exotic goods. Examining how, how quickly, these practices of ritual landscape modification spread across the Ohio River Valley provides one understanding of emergent social complexity where massive labor feats were conducted outside a sociopolitical structure grounded in a rigid hierarchy.Mr. Henry will examine how ditch-and-embankment geometric enclosures were built across the Bluegrass Region of Central Kentucky in the Middle Ohio Valley. This region is considered the heartland of Adena and Hopewell societies in ancient Eastern North America. Examining these ritual sites in Kentucky provides a view south of the Ohio River, where chronological understandings of enclosure construction needs refinement. A better historical understanding of enclosure construction, use, and abandonment will help indicate how quickly social changes associated with the emergence of Adena and Hopewell (e.g., a hunting and horticultural economy, ceramic technology, new animalistic iconography) spread. In addition, this work will show how particular ritual practices were adopted across the region. By excavating multiple areas of eight earthen enclosures across Central Kentucky, Henry will see how the landscape was modified during each sites construction and determine if differences exist in traditions of ritual labor. He will examine the construction profiles of embankments and ditches with trenches and open large (ca. 4 x 4 meter) excavation blocks inside enclosures to explore the activities carried out within their boundaries. This robust dataset will be used to examine the organization and spread of social complexity in ancient Eastern North America. The historical component of this research will be relevant to the background of modern American Indians. This research will provide specialized archaeological training to students pursuing degrees in anthropology and archaeology.